We Are Listening And We Do Remember

We have all heard that phrase about not burning your bridges, right? Here's a definition from an online dictionary to make it official.

burn one's bridges

phrase [VERB inflects]

If you burn your bridges, you do something which forces you to continue with a particular course of action, and makes it impossible for you to return to an earlier situation or relationship.

I bring this up because I do think authors sometimes forget this. I don't know how many times I have seen and heard authors say and do things either in emails and queries, or at conferences and I see that they will really regret what they just did in the future. Of course, the odds are, they probably won't have a clue that the prior action caused the second problem to occur.

This week, I received a submission from an author. Now, I always tell people, I do keep a pretty extensive database that tells me your name, the title of your story, the genre, how you submitted it, when I received it, when I replied, my response, and my thoughts. When it comes to my thoughts, if I have someone who was a complete jerk and I don't care if I could retire with their manuscript, I note that in my data base following my big fat REJECT note. In any case, when this person submitted this new project, their name popped up so I went back to see what I had gotten in the past. Woops, there was that comment. 

Now, here is the thing. This story might have had a bit of a chance, but honestly, what that person did the first time around told me that this author is someone that no agent or editor would ever want to work with. Here comes that next rejection.

OK, I know some of you are thinking, "But Scott, people change. Why not give someone a second chance?" You know, I am all for second chances. I do know people change. But I am also a firm believer of "You never get a second chance to make a first impression" and that publishing IS a business. You have to be professional. 

So, if you get a rejection and you don't like our response, consider first reading the response and seeing what we really said. The odds are we did not say your writing was a piece of "you know what." We did tell you why it did not work for us. Learn and grow with that. But responding defensively to us, just lit that bridge on fire and...

...well you get the point!